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The breakdown of Electoral College math changed after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. But two battlegrounds remain must-win states in the contest between Harris and former President Donald Trump.

According to the Wall Street Journal, both campaigns have zeroed in on Georgia and Pennsylvania as the cornerstones to their overall victory. While there are other hotly contested swing states up for grabs like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin, there is a growing consensus among both Democrats and Republicans that their most direct path to 270 requires securing both Georgia and Pennsylvania in their own respective win columns. Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser Doug Sosnik described those states as the two major "pivot points" in the 2024 race.

During a panel discussion CNN's "The Chris Wallace Show," a conservative pollster and a political commentator both claimed that Donald Trump is playing with fire by alienating voters before what is expected to be a very close election.

Speaking with the host about Donald Trump's visit to Arlington National Cemetery for a photo-op that has set off a wave of outrage, pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson stated she found the whole escapade deplorable and stated it could hurt him with some families of veterans.

Asked by host Wallace "Did Trump's Arlington behavior undercut his message about Afghanistan and the way we got out?" Soltis Anderson replied, " I think it did. I think that his campaign saying we were not in the wrong and we have video to prove it but then that video has not has mysteriously not emerged I think it's interesting and i think that this is, this is just terrible."

ALSO READ: Cruelty is all the Republicans have left

She continued, "But do I think it's actually going to affect things? Just think, it was two weeks ago that we were talking about Trump trying to draw this weird equivalence between the Medal of Honor and the Medal of Freedom. I mean, he has sort of picked fights that people say this is going to cost him with veterans."

"The community of veterans is a very politically diverse community, he had some families there, that's a "Yes. come with us to Section 60' and others that say 'No, we think this guy's a disgrace," she added.

Commentator Kara Swisher suggested the former president is doing nothing to add to the voter pool he needs and, instead, is driving them away with a series of missteps.

"This was a political event for him and then there was some scheme around Kamala Harris," she began. "Every time he manages to step in it, he steps in it and he didn't just end there with the heinous behavior."

"My dad was in the military until he died, "she continued. "For me this is so offensive, and I can't can't believe someone did this and then pushed around an employee."

"So but how about Kristen's point? " host Wallace interjected. "You find it offensive, a lot of stuff is offensive."

"You have to be offended. I think most people whose parents went into the military would be offended, but that's okay," she countered. "You don't have to be but then he like tops it by doing the the other thing around Kamala Harris, tweeting something about sexual activity, which is comparing her and Hillary Clinton in a really grotesque way. He's just one after the next after the next, and it's offensive to someone somewhere. He's not adding voters, he's subtracting voters."

Watch below or at the link.

Former President Donald Trump's campaign team failing to thoroughly vet Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) ahead of his selection as Trump's running mate caught the former president off guard, according to a new report.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that while Trump was hoping to "ease Mr. Vance into the spotlight" following his nomination, the flurry of negative news reports about the Ohio senator's comments denigrating women necessitated a new media strategy. The Times' Michael C. Bender wrote that the first tidal wave of bad coverage surrounding Vance prompted Trump to wonder "just how many hits his new running mate could absorb."

On Saturday morning, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele unloaded on Donald Trump for desperately trying to deflect criticism for his invasion of Arlington National Cemetery just so he could hold a photo-op despite it being expressly prohibited.

From his perch as co-host of MSNBC's "The Weekend," Steele noted that now that the photo shoot has blown up into a major scandal that has infuriated veterans, the former president is pointing fingers everywhere — including families who were involved — instead of taking the blame.

With that he noted that the former president is engaging in his favorite pastime: changing his story daily so the truth gets lost.

ALSO READ: Cruelty is all the Republicans have left

Pointing out that Trump claimed the families "...love me and I love them," Steele exclaimed, "Really, Donald? When did you get to know them? Did you have coffee with them?"

"This is the thing I find so frustrating. Donald Trump is just an immature little brat who wants his way, " he continued. "He will find people to help him get his way. Then what happens after this, the rest of us get sucked into this vortex of BS. We sort of get caught up in the entertainment value. We get called into the newsiness of it but this is not news here. This is embarrassing to the country to have this man do this. As you know he is a civilian, not a president, so we need to quit treating him like it."

Watch below or at the link.

With the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that now requires potential voters to provide proof of citizenship with their state-created voter registration forms, Indigenous voting rights advocates want Indigenous people to know that they can still register to vote as tribal citizens.

Patty Ferguson-Bohnee said that Indigenous people living in Arizona who are enrolled in a federally recognized tribe can use their tribal identification numbers to prove their citizenship.

Between now and November, the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigns expect to spend a lot of time in Arizona — a complex swing state that, according to polls, could go either way in the United States' 2024 presidential election..

Arizona is also where a closely-watched U.S. Senate race finds Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and far-right MAGA Republican Kari Lake are competing for the seat presently held by independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (a former Democrat).

The ad looks like any political TV attack ad: Gray, grainy images. Big, bold words that convey negative information. Pictures of scary, rogue international leaders.

The ad, which began airing this week, targets Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. But it doesn’t come from Alsobrooks’ Republican opponent, former Gov. Larry Hogan.

After legal fights, counter-campaigns and bureaucratic wrangling all year long, as things stand today, abortion questions in 10 states are heading to ballots in November.

After abortion rights were upended federally in June 2022, Kansas voters got a chance to weigh in on a ballot measure that was something of a test balloon just a couple of months later. Defying expectations, nearly 60% of voters rejected an anti-abortion constitutional amendment.

A group of Democratic state lawmakers on Friday asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate potential violations of federal law and civil and voting rights related to Texas state leaders’ recent voter roll purge, raids of Latinos’ homes in connection to alleged election fraud, probing of voter registration organizations and ongoing scrutiny of groups that work with migrants.

“Collectively, these actions have a disproportionate impact on Latinos and other communities of color, which is sowing fear and will suppress voting,” twelve Texas senators wrote in the letter. “We urge the DOJ to investigate Texas … and to take all necessary action to protect the fundamental rights of all Texans and ensure all citizens’ freedom to vote is unencumbered.”

The request for federal authorities to intervene is the latest escalation in response to what Texas leaders have often described as efforts to secure elections.

The efforts, however, have just as often provoked condemnation and worries from civil rights groups and Democrats that the state is violating Texans’ rights and trying to scare people away from the polls.

The League of United Latin American Citizens, a large Latino civil rights organization founded in 1929, made a similar plea to the feds earlier this week. Several of the group’s elderly members were the targets last week of search warrants related to an investigation into alleged election fraud being conducted by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.

Paxton’s office has said little about that probe other than it pertains to allegations of election fraud and vote harvesting. Affidavits for warrants obtained by The Texas Tribune show that investigators were looking into allegations that a Frio County political operator had illegally harvested votes for multiple local races.

LULAC leaders have blasted the investigation as an effort to intimidate voters.

In the letter requesting a civil rights review, they wrote about Lydia Martinez, an 80-year-old grandmother with 35 years as a LULAC member who was woken up at 6 a.m. by armed authorities who interrogated her for hours and confiscated her devices, personal calendar and voter registration materials.

“These actions echo a troubling history of voter suppression and intimidation that has long targeted both Black and Latino communities, particularly in states like Texas, where demographic changes have increasingly shifted the political landscape,” the letter states. “The right to vote is fundamental to our democracy, and LULAC stands firm in its commitment to defending that right for all Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity.”

The Justice Department had received LULAC’s letter, a spokesperson confirmed Friday but declined to comment further.

In their letter Friday, the Texas Senate Democratic caucus pointed to the raids targeting LULAC members and a series of other actions that, they wrote, raised “serious concerns” that Paxton and other state leaders might be violating federal civil rights and voting laws.

The group highlighted the opening of an investigation last week by Paxton’s office into voter registration organizations following a debunked claim by a Fox News host that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license office near Fort Worth.

The claim was disputed by the Department of Public Safety, a local Republican county chair and the local elections administrator — all who said no evidence supported it — but Paxton opened an investigation anyway, the lawmakers wrote.

They also said that DPS, which manages the state’s drivers license offices, has since prohibited groups from registering people to vote outside their offices — ending a decades-old practice the agency had allowed “without issue.”

“Voter registration organizations seek to improve civic engagement in a state that has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country,” the letter states. “Many of them now are concerned they will be the next to be harassed and targeted.”

The Democratic lawmakers also expressed concern that the removal of more than a million people from the state’s voter rolls might have included legitimate voters and that Texas might be violating a federal law that prohibits states from conducting such routine voter roll maintenance during a 90-day period ahead of an election — echoing a coalition of watchdog and voting rights groups that this week shared the worry.

The Senators lastly pointed to ongoing state efforts targeting nonprofits and nongovernmental entities that work with migrants and immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border and beyond.

Those examinations began after Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022 directed Paxton’s office to investigate the role of such groups “in planning and facilitating the illegal transportation of illegal immigrants across our borders.”

The reviews are one piece of Texas’ response to record migration that Abbott and other state leaders say is the fault of the “open border policies” of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.

Through a border security initiative called Operation Lone Star, the state has deployed thousands of Texas National Guard troops and DPS troopers to patrol the border and arrest migrants on state charges. Meanwhile in courts, Paxton’s office has repeatedly challenged the Biden administration's immigration policies.

“Although the burden to address the ongoing border crisis should not fall to Texas, the federal government has failed to take action to address this problem,” Abbott wrote to Paxton in the letter, adding he “appreciate[d]” the suits. “But as the facts on the ground continue to change,” Abbott added, “we must remain vigilant in our response to this crisis.”

In response, Paxton’s office has sought to depose the leaders of at least two organizations that provide humanitarian aid to migrants and tried to shut down two other groups.

Texas state judges have mostly rejected these Paxton initiatives, which have accused the groups of violating human smuggling laws and in one instance accused a group of violating rules that govern nonprofit’s political involvement.

But Paxton has continued fighting.

In perhaps the most high-profile case, Paxton’s office tried to shutter a migrant shelter network, Annunciation House, that it accused of violating laws prohibiting human smuggling and operating a stash house.

After an El Paso judge denied the effort, Paxton appealed directly to the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. On Friday, the state’s highest civil court scheduled oral arguments for the appeal in mid-January.

The Harris campaign is blasting Donald Trump's "lies" about in-vitro fertilization after the ex-president said on Thursday if elected he will order the federal government or insurance companies to pay for the cost of IVF. That claim mirrors several Democratic bills, including legislation Senate Republicans blocked in June. He also vowed to help parents with newborns deduct costs from their taxes, a proposal similar to part of Harris's broad economic plan to help families lower expenses.

"Donald Trump's own platform could effectively ban IVF and abortion nationwide," the Harris-Walz campaign said in a statement Thursday evening. "Trump lies as much if not more than he breathes, but voters aren't stupid. Because Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, IVF is already under attack and women's freedoms have been ripped away in states across the country."

As Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance split up and hit the road and make the case for retaking the White House from the Democrats in November, they are creating headaches for the campaign because they can't seem to get on the same page when it comes to messaging.

According to a report from CNN's Daniel Strauss, the question of the availability of abortion and restrictive laws various states want to place upon it is not only roiling the Republican Party, it is also creating problems for the Trump campaign as the ex-president says one thing and his running mate makes a different claim.

As Strauss reported on Saturday morning, in interviews Vance is telling reporters that Trump will veto a proposed federal abortion ban if it comes across his desk if re-elected. At the same time, the former president is refusing to answer the question which is creating confusion and chaos for the Trump campaign.

ALSO READ: The real reason corporate media won't cover Trump's attacks on democracy

Speaking with CNN, Trump refused to confirm Vance's claim and instead said it was a moot point because he believes the states are handling it.

As Strauss reported, "Now this comes at a time that is pretty inconvenient for any Republican presidential nominee to be sort of vacillating on abortion and abortion rights. It's only a few weeks or only less than 100 days till the election and Trump needs the support of both more moderate voters and the national electorate that generally is more moderate on abortion and the conservative republican base that is interested in more restrictive bans so right now, it's pretty difficult for Trump and his campaign to navigate this."

As for the conflicting messaging, he added, "Honestly this is kind of a nightmare for any comms operative on a campaign where one principal is saying one thing and another principal is saying the opposite."

You can watch below or at the link.